Author: warwick

One of the toughest things about making changes in your life is defining a new “normal”. It’s hard to move against the inertia of existing habits, both good and bad. In my last post, I ran through a list of things on which I needed to focus, including structure. Today was my first day back in the office, and like all “Mondays” it got sideways quickly. My lesson from today is an easy one: anticipate the bad days with a plan.

Let’s try to start of 2017 and spend more time here. Writing on my weblog used to be something I would do often and I actually enjoyed it, but I never made it a priority and it’s languished. I look back on it with regret, and that’s wrong – it’s just a thing that happened.

I still work at CenturyLink but I got a promotion last year to management and it’s been a fantastic experience. I spent the last 6 1/2 months on the road most weeks, travelling across 6 states working with a team of fantastic sales engineers, and that caused me to reevaluate my life habits in general. Like most people, I have good days and bad so in 2017, I’m going to try to handle things by focusing on “streaks”:

Fitness: It’s a tired trope of blogs, but I’m going to try to streak for fitness. I live pretty close to a 24 hour gym and that means that I’ve got opportunity and motive to spend each day there, doing something active. If I can streak it to 7 days straight, then I’ll try for 2 weeks, then 4 weeks and hopefully the habit is built. I read about someone that spend last year running 2,016 miles and the idea of doing something like that for 2017 makes some sense. I can’t run that well, but walking/running for 2,017 miles throughout the year gives me a goal with perspective. I’m hoping that streaking gym time will push me in other directions like weights and general fitness.

Food: Food and good eating habits are in my brain, but I usually take an easy way out when I’m on the road for work. I’m going to find a way to avoid the bad stuff while out of the office and again, streak it until I find a new balance point. My focus is the streak of good decisions, not the meal-to-meal success or failure.

Structure: I’m planning my time more because with the new job, the “8-5” of the work day can be very random with priorities. I’m going to log my time spent on things during the month of January and use that as a skeleton of a schedule for future months.

I think 3 things are enough to focus on for now. I know from experience in previous years that these will deliver benefits on the side, like stress reduction, weight reduction and “happiness”.

I don’t write here much, and there’s probably good reasons for it. I spend time on Twitter (@stevekirks) and on the web forums for PilotEdge so this space get neglected. I’m still working for CenturyLink doing basically the same thing I’ve done for years: help people understand the technology they have and then help them understand the technology they need.

I keep thinking that this site is for personal items or longform writing, neither of which I’ve been motivated to write. Mostly it’s time–I like to write something of quality and not a blurb or comment–so that leaves me at a crossroads. I spend all day on a computer for work, then some evenings on the flight simulator, practicing or flying for fun, so writing seems like the furthest thing from my mind.

On April 13th of this year, I was finally able to take my first flight lesson. A gift from my dad, it was about and hour behind the controls of a Cherokee 140 out of the airport in Bolivar, MO (M17). It included a quick pre-flight walkaround, then a flight over to Stockton, MO for some basic maneuvers and back to Bolivar.

It was an experience I’ll never forget…

I’ve been flying using a home simulator setup for about the last year or more so much of the flight was familiar but the real life sensations weren’t. I was on sensory overload most of the flight but was able to fly the plane using the habits already in place from the time on the simulator. My instructor told my dad that “he’s a natural” and my dad was impressed that the landing was good remarking “if you’d greased it on the first flight I would have been shocked”.

It cemented the idea in my mind that I could indeed become a pilot. About a month later it was my birthday, and everyone chipped in to open a savings account in my name for flight lessons, filled with enough cash to get three lessons booked.

Here’s some quick notes about my experience flying some of the legs from this year’s WorldFlight on VATSIM:

Flying the 777 during high traffic events:

Man, this plane is amazing! FMC programming was a breeze and takeoff/landing was relatively straightforward. I had some issues landing at some airports due to my scenery files were not updated but the FMC navigation data was. One of the flights had the ILS localizer about 100 feet to the left of the scenery’s runway. A quick dance to disengage the autopilot and a slide to the right and all was well.

Knowing how to program a HOLD at a fix in the FMC:

I was quickly able to program a random, non-published hold in the FMC while on approach. That was mainly due to reading the manual and having it open while working the sim. I got about 5 minutes warning before reaching the fix:

That was reasonable simple, but I had never done it and it was nerve-racking for sure. Luckily it was one circuit so within a 5 minute span of time, I programmed the hold, completed the circuit and exited the hold, with aircraft in front and behind me.

Tips for flying in events:

Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know how to do something or declare unable. It’s more important to say what you can/can’t do so controllers know how to handle your flight.

Don’t trust the FMC and autopilot to fly the plane. When you’re in a densely populated area of air traffic, set the heading and speed as “fixed” and wait for the controller to tell you direction. Most of all, it’s up to you to slow the plane for the arrival and landing UNLESS given speed restrictions.

Make sure you understand engine de-rates an climb thrust for your airplane. On two separate takeoffs, I used assumed info when programming the flight and that left me woefully underpowered for the climb out. A quick trip to the FMC to program an override was my solution. Others were not so lucky.

ATC Coverage:

The WorldFlight ATC team was great and worked very hard to keep everyone on track, inbound and outbound. I’ve got some ideas about helping these guys out for next year, but I’ll save that for a future post.